Trick of the Dark (20 page)

Magda closed her eyes momentarily and prayed for courage. Catherine reached out under the table and patted her thigh. 'I have met someone, yes. But it's not a man.'

Henry squinted at her, as if he couldn't quite make sense of what she was saying. 'I don't understand. Not a man? What? Someone's offered you a job or something?'

'No, Dad. Not a job. I'm in love with someone. But it's not a man, it's a woman. I'm having a relationship with a woman.'

Henry looked confused, then appalled. 'You're a lesbian?' It was hard to imagine how he could have packed more disgust into three words.

'Yes,' Magda said.

He pushed his chair back and stood up, reeling away from the table, his head in his hands. 'How can that be? You were married to Philip. You've always had boyfriends. This is madness. ' He whirled round and glowered at the three women. 'Someone has corrupted you. Taken advantage of your grief. Weaselled their way in when you were down.' His voice dropped, dark with anger. 'Who has done this to you? Who's seduced my daughter? Tell me, Magda.'

Magda jumped up, determined not to be faced down. 'I'm a grown woman, Dad. I'm not a child who can be sweet-talked into something she doesn't want to do. I'm in love and I'm not ashamed of it. And if you're interested in who my lover is, I'll tell you. It's Jay Macallan Stewart. You probably remember her as plain Jay Stewart.'

Henry stopped in his tracks, mouthing the name without any sound coming out. Then he turned to Corinna. 'Jay Stewart. Isn't that . . . didn't she . . . wasn't she one of your retinue? The silly hero-worshippers you lined up to babysit the kids?'

Corinna sighed. 'Jay was one of my students, yes. And yes, she did babysit the kids.'

Henry clutched at the lower half of his face. 'You left my children with a pervert.' Now his hands were like claws, waving in front of him as if he was looking for a target to rip apart. 'Now look what's happened.' He pointed at Corinna. 'This is all your fault.' Henry enunciated each word carefully and softly, his disdain obvious.

'Dad, calm down.' Catherine walked up to her father and put a calming hand on his shoulder. 'Jay's not a pervert, not like you make it sound. She was great with us when we were kids. She never did or even said anything remotely inappropriate. ' Henry shrugged off her hand and stepped forward, pushing her aside. He was only feet away from Corinna, his hands balling into fists. Corinna stood her ground, and Magda understood that her mother was safe from physical attack. Henry was too much of a coward to risk hitting a woman as tough as his wife.

'Jay's a lesbian, not a paedophile,' Magda said, her jaw tight with anger. 'Just like me, actually. Get it straight, Dad. She's not a Catholic priest, she doesn't prey on children. And even if this was about blame, which it isn't, it wouldn't be Mum's fault.'

'This is disgusting,' Henry said, his voice cracking. 'You disgust me. We brought you up with standards, with beliefs. And now this . . . this vile, vile thing.'

Catherine tried again to inject some calm into the moment. 'Dad, you're getting this all wrong. How can two people loving each other be vile?'

This time, Henry turned on her. 'How can you be so naive, you stupid girl? If love was enough, then incest or paedophilia would be acceptable in the eyes of the world, and the church. Some things are just wrong. They're sins. They go against nature.' He spun back round and glared at Magda. 'That your sister can even ask that question . . . you've corrupted her as well.' He shrugged off Catherine's hand and slumped back in his chair, head in hands. 'I can't bear this.' He looked up at her blearily, his eyes bloodshot and damp. 'My beautiful girl. Tainted now.'

'Can we all stop being so melodramatic?' Catherine said plaintively. 'Let's just sit down and talk about this like adults.'

'Be quiet, Catherine,' Henry said savagely, his voice low and hard. 'Magda, I can't bear to look at you. I want you out of this house, now. And don't even think about coming back till you've repented of your evil. Get out, Magda.'

'This is wrong, Dad,' Catherine said. 'This is so wrong. We're family. You can't treat Magda like this.'

'I can and I will, because right is on my side,' Henry said, his face tight and mean with conviction.

'You make me sick, Henry,' Corinna said.

'You brought the sickness in,' he replied. 'Believe me, I know who to blame for this. Think yourself lucky I'm not throwing you out along with your sick daughter.'

'I've heard enough of this,' Magda said. 'If there's anybody sick in here, it's you. You're a drunk and a bigot and you'd love to be a bully if you only had the guts. Well, you won't bully me out of happiness.' She grabbed her coat and ran for the stairs.

Catherine moved to face her father. 'And I'm saying goodbye too. What Magda's doing, it's life-affirming. It's about love. I don't think you know what that means any more. You need help, Dad.' Without waiting for the abuse she knew would come, she followed her sister.

She caught up with Magda as she reached the car. She flung her arms round her sister and held her tight. Magda gave a shaky laugh, tears in her eyes. 'So how do you think it went, Wheelie?'

Catherine rubbed her back. 'Could have been worse, Maggot. Hard to see how, but I'm sure it could have been worse.'

9

I
t was amazing how vivid her memories were of that morning on Sgurr Dearg. Jay didn't even have to close her eyes to see the monochrome landscape of cloud and rock and snow and ice. Kathy's red jacket and fleece hat were a splash of outrageous colour in the landscape. What should have been a breathtaking panorama over peaks to the sea lochs to east and west was pared to the bone by the low cloud and the scattered bouts of sleety rain. But the view had never been the point of the trip.

We were quiet as we put on our harnesses and roped up in preparation for the climb. The rope is the symbol of the bond between climbing partners. Its practical purpose is to minimise the risk from dangers that the individual climber would struggle to handle alone. No matter how high your levels of skill, experience and physical ability, it's always psychologically easier to be attached to somebody else when you're struggling for the next handhold on a sheer slippery slab of rock.

The east route up the In Pinn was described by the Victorian climbers who first conquered it as a ridge less than a foot wide, 'with an overhanging and infinite drop on one side, and steeper and further on the other'.They weren't exaggerating. Technically, it's only a 'Moderate' climb in terms of the skills you need to be able to accomplish the ascent. But a glance to either side at any time during the ascent can make your bowels turn to water and your stomach flip. And in terms of the consequences if you get it wrong, it's totally unforgiving. Nobody knows that better than me.

When we set off, the clouds were heavy and the air was freezing, but the sleet had stopped and we felt confident we could manage the climb. And to begin with, that's exactly what we did. We set off up a short, steep but easy pitch, the perfect confidence builder for what was to come. And so we began the next pitch, a section of rock that rewarded slow and steady progress. We'd built up a rhythm with hands and feet, moving with confidence, trusting the rock and trusting each other. At the halfway point, we stopped briefly on a ledge. But there was no shelter from the biting wind so we set off again almost immediately. The first few moves were tricky and I had to get my ice axes out, but then the route appeared as obvious as a flight of stairs.

But what a flight of stairs! Imagine crawling up a fifty-foot set of uneven steps with a sheer drop on either side. Now think about doing it on ice. Now think about doing it on ice with someone throwing handfuls of stinging snow in your face. For by now, our worst fear had come to pass. It was snowing. Not just the odd flake, but a full-on fall. Great flakes that covered my eyes and filled my mouth and nose, hurled at me by the harsh wind. Kathy had taken over the lead at the midway point, and the snow that had come out of nowhere was like a curtain between us. She was only a few feet ahead of me yet I could barely see her.

At moments like this, there's not a climber in the world who doesn't know the fear. You try to force it from the front of your mind by concentrating on every move, making sure your hold is solid before you trust your weight to it. But the fear can't be denied. It hums through your veins alongside the adrenaline that keeps you going. That day, as I carried on towards the summit, all I could think was that I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, and as the wet and cold ate into me I was gradually becoming less capable of feeling my hands and feet. In no time at all, I felt like an automaton struggling to keep with the programme.

When the change came, it came without warning. The rope jerked so suddenly and so hard it nearly pulled me straight off the mountain. If I hadn't been wearing spiked crampons on my boots, I'd have been ripped straight off the icy surface to the valley below. As it was, I was yanked sideways so that the top half of my body was twisted across the ridge. The pain was instant and excruciating. My instinct was to grab the rope, to try to shift some of the weight that was pulling me on to the edge of the ridge so hard I could scarcely breathe. It took an agonisingly long time, but at last I managed to straighten myself enough to be able to catch my breath and try to work out what had happened.

The one thing that was clear as soon as I started thinking rather than reacting was that Kathy had come off the mountain. What I desperately needed to find out was what kind of state she was in. If she was conscious and relatively unhurt, it shouldn't be a problem. We both carried the equipment to make what's called a Prusik loop which can be used to help a climber get back up a rope. If I could hold on, she could get back up little by little.

If she wasn't able to climb, things would get more difficult. Using the same piece of equipment, the Prusik loop, the climber who's left on the mountain can attach the rope to a solid piece of rock and let that take the strain. If I could get out of the rope like that, I could try to hoist Kathy back on to the ridge. Or in the worst case, I could secure the rope and go for help.

I prayed the vertigo wouldn't get me and moved my head so I could look down the side of the In Pinn ridge. I needn't have worried.The snow was so thick by then that I could barely see the scarlet of Kathy's jacket. As far as I could make out, she was swinging in the wind, arms and legs dangling. 'Kathy!' I yelled at the top of my voice. 'Kathy!'

I was sure I heard a response, a low moan rising from my partner. My spirits rose like the sudden jagged peak on a hospital bedside monitor. She was conscious. We could get out of this. We were going to be all right. I called out again. And again.

Nothing.

Desperate, I shouted one more time, but there was no response except for the sound of the wind. It dawned on me that what I had heard was the weather, not Kathy. The realisation was like a blow. It looked as if Plan A was a non-starter. All I could think was that she must have hit her head in the fall. These days, I wouldn't dream of climbing without a helmet, but back then, like most of the young climbers I knew, I was convinced I was immortal. Neither of us had worn a helmet that day. Just one of many things I would go back and change if I could.

Plan B was dependent on there being an anchor point for the Prusik loop. If I was going to escape the terrible pressure of the rope, there had to be something else sturdy enough to take the strain. I knew the basalt and gabbro were strong enough. All I needed was a sturdy knob of rock or a little pinnacle that I could get a sling around. I lifted my head and studied the area around me.

Nothing.

I looked again. But there wasn't anything that remotely resembled the kind of promontory I needed. We'd passed plenty of suitable bits of rock on the way up, but it was our bad luck that this part of the climb consisted of the kind of planes and angles that didn't provide anything suitable to tie off the rope.

There was one last possibility. Climbing technology has provided us with an amazing range of gadgets and gizmos. Given the smallest crack or crevice, we can create an anchor using one of the nuts or hexes or cams that we all routinely carry. But all I had in easy reach were my ice axes. I didn't trust their grip with Kathy's weight. Somehow I was going to have to get at my backpack.

That wasn't as easy as it sounds. My first attempt nearly ended in disaster. Even so slight a shift in my weight was enough to destabilise my position. I felt my balance alter and for one terrible moment I thought I was going to plummet down the mountain, taking Kathy with me. I realised I was going to have to do this infinitely slowly.

That would have been fine if we'd been climbing on a warm summer day with hours of daylight ahead of us. But we were in a blizzard on a February day in the Cuillin, and now that I wasn't moving, my body was starting to seize up. My fingers were chilled, and the cold was slowing my brain and my reactions. But I had to keep going. Time and light were slipping away now we were past noon and heading for darkness.

As I eased my backpack off my shoulders with agonising slowness, I remembered there might be another hope of rescue. There was a mobile phone in my backpack. Not any old mobile, which would of course have had no signal back in those days in the remote heart of Skye.Thanks to Kathy's love of gadgetry, we both had satellite phones. I had grumbled about the extra weight in my pack, but she had insisted. Now, if the gods smiled on me and I could get a signal, I could simply call the mountain rescue to come and pluck us off this hateful chunk of rock.